Hyderabad: Nasscom, in partnership with the Telangana government, will establish a Centre of Excellence for Data Science and Artificial Intelligence here, it was announced on Tuesday.

An MoU for this was signed by the state government and The National Association of Software & Services Companies (Nasscom) on Tuesday on the sidelines of the World Congress on Information Technology (WCIT).

To be established in public-private partnership mode, the CoE is the latest addition to Nasscom's 'hub-and-spoke' network of CoEs across major locations in the country, aimed at evangelizing new and emerging technologies, the computer industry's apex body said.

With an initial joint investment of Rs 40 crore, the centre will catalyze the growth of the deep tech ecosystem in Telangana, by providing the stimulus for innovation and in-depth research in the areas of data science and artificial intelligence.

Leveraging its partner and member ecosystem, Nasscom will work to enable industry-oriented research, augment citizen-centric solutions, promote data-driven decision making, enhance academic capacities, and support appropriate skills building and talent development through the CoE.

The CoE will serve as a platform for intelligence-sharing and technology collaboration between stakeholders to build collective capabilities for the industry and country in the cutting-edge areas of data science and artificial intelligence.

It will provide high-end technology, field expertise, and curated programs to augment capabilities across academia, enterprises, government, innovators and advanced start-ups.

The MoU was signed by Telangana's Information Technology Secretary Jayesh Ranjan and Nasscom President R. Chandrasekhar in the presence of Telangana IT Minister K. T. Rama Rao.

Jayesh Ranjan said the CoE will be temporarily come up in the campus of International Institute of Information Technology (IIIT) and will be later shifted to Data Analytics Park to come up at Budvel on the city outskirts.

"The government is keen to create a robust Data Science & Artificial Intelligence ecosystem for the various stakeholders to thrive, by providing support, mentorship, and other capabilities. This CoE is in the direction for developing Telangana and India as global hub for DS & AI in the coming years," said Rama Rao.

"The vision behind this CoE is to consolidate and streamline efforts in this space by building state-of-the-art infrastructure to amplify the impact that India can indigenously create. With the opportunities that digital technologies present, this CoE-DS&AI is strategically placed to provide data-backed solutions to critical and complex problems across the country and globe," said Chandrashekhar.

Data science and artificial intelligence technologies allow harnessing complex, high volume, high speed data into insights for decision making, emerging as the one of biggest growth opportunities for India to capitalize on. In recent times, artificial intelligence has found applications across industries including financial services, automotive, healthcare, and retail.

It is expected that the data science and artificial intelligence industry in India will be worth $16 billion by 2025, and is likely to spur an additional employment of 150,000 professionals in the country.